Welcome to the College of Nurses Aotearoa News Update.
No. 344 19 April 2017
NATIONAL NEWS
Overseas mental health nurses no longer an urgent recruitment target for Government
After spending at least three years on the immediate skills shortage list, mental health nurses from overseas are no longer being sought by Immigration New Zealand to address urgent staff shortages.
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Mental health and addiction nurses on the rise in Marlborough and Nelson
The number of nurses working in mental health and addiction in the top of the South has increased over the past five years, but there is a declining number of specialists in the sector.
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NZ's health system rates well on global transparency index
New Zealand has performed strongly in a global report on healthcare transparency - although the study has identified some key areas for improvement.
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Turning Healthcare around: Health professionals learning together makes for better healthcare
How many times have you told your story over and over again to health professionals? Poor communication between clinicians can turn health care into a bad experience.
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ACC treatment injury claims tally $5.1b and many are preventable
ACC claims for injuries caused during medical treatment have ballooned by 66 per cent in the past five years – weighing a cost of $418m on taxpayers for last year alone.
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DIABETES
The pre-diabetes tidal wave - harbinger of doom or symptom of an overdiagnosis epidemic?
On the numbers, a quarter of adult Kiwis have it. And that's about where the consensus ends.
Suddenly, pre-diabetes appears everywhere – the subject of newly funded New Zealand research projects and endless international papers.
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Online programs help people prevent, manage diabetes
Online programs are showing success helping people avoid diabetes or manage or reverse their disease, using video chats with physicians, health coaches such as dietitians, and apps for blood sugar monitoring. The programs offer dietary recommendations and counseling to help people lose weight, and while they can be expensive, some health insurers cover them and larger companies may include them as part of employee benefits.
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EMERGENCY MEDICINE AND SERVICES
Doctors warn of threat to ‘green light’ emergency life-savers
A nationwide network of emergency doctors are warning "precar
ious" funding could put lives at risk.Primary Response in Medical Emergencies (Prime) responders support mainly rural communities from about 75 sites but say they are already not paid for call-outs and a lack of awareness about the service could lead to its demise.
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INFECTION CONTROL
Northland patients part of worldwide Hepatitis C cure
Northland is among the locations worldwide where a drug to treat Hepatitis C is achieving a near-100 percent success rate. Curing the disease in individuals is hoped to contribute to the worldwide eradication of the debilitating liver disease as an epidemic.
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MENTAL HEALTH
Media Take: Kiwis feel abandoned by mental health system - Mike King
Comedian and mental health advocate Mike King has called out Health Minister Jonathan Coleman on his lack of knowledge on mental health matters
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Government calling for views on how to lower suicide rate
Suicide is the third most common reason why people die early in New Zealand, and the Government wants a nationwide conversation on how to lower our notoriously high rates.
Health Minister Jonathan Coleman has released a draft strategy for the prevention of suicide and is calling for public views amid some startling statistics.
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Mental Health Foundation to politicians: “step up and work together on significant new approaches to mental health”
With the 2017 election drawing closer, the Mental Health Foundation (MHF) is today calling for all political parties to publicly commit to working together to provide leadership and a clear national plan for a renewed approach to mental health and wellbeing in Aotearoa New Zealand.
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ORGAN DONATION
Basic issues cited for NZ's lack of organ donors
An Auckland teenager's "second chance" at life has been held up as another reason for New Zealand to tackle its poor rate of organ donors.
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SOCIAL HEALTH
Everyone wins when lower-income families own their own homes, says study
Getting lower-income families into home ownership won't just ease the housing crisis – it will have social, health and economic benefits across the board, new research says.
The Housing Foundation has gathered a raft of international studies showing how getting low and low-middle income families into their own homes has benefits for mental and physical health and job security, while lowering crime and welfare dependency and increasing asset wealth and education.
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TOBACCO, DRUGS AND ALCOHOL
Pregnant Maori women 'not a priority' in getting support to stop smoking, study says
Maori women are not getting the support they need to stop smoking while pregnant, the author of an international study says.
New research has found Maori women are at a social disadvantage when it comes to education, healthcare and employment - driving high rates of smoking and undermining attempts to quit.
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INTERNATIONAL NEWS
Nurses face unprecedented challenges, opportunities in the next 15 years
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- In an era of health care reform, the role of nurses is more important than ever. Today’s workforce seems poised to respond to the changes, with more and better-educated nurses, steady employment growth and higher earnings. But with greater opportunity come greater challenges, and the profession’s leadership must adapt to keep pace with a rapidly evolving health delivery system.
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ARTICLES OF INTEREST
An Integrative Literature Review of the Factors That Contribute to Professional Nurses and Midwives Making Sound Clinical Decisions
To identify available literature concerning the factors that contribute to nurses and midwives making sound clinical decisions.
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Living dolls and nurses without empathy
We first became interested in the use of simulation technology in nursing programmes when discussing the opening of a simulation laboratory in a large university a few years ago. A cast of hundreds of very important people looked on at the demonstration by academics and final year students of the impressive new technology. The ‘patient’ in question was a 44-year-old male, single parent who was experiencing crushing chest pain, diagnosed by the technology as a cardiac event. What caused us much consternation whilst observing the demonstration was that not once in the interaction did any attending ‘nurse’ acknowledge the anxiety the ‘patient’ would have undoubtedly been feeling, let alone address any of his likely emotional or psychological concerns. In other words, the actual person in the bed was ignored in favour of the technology and the purely physiological data it provided.
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Building leadership capacity in advanced nurse practitioners – the role of organisational management
To highlight the organisation-level management's role in building leadership capacity in advanced nurse practitioners and the need for appropriate supports to increase their becoming leaders.
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The above information has been collated for the College of Nurses Aotearoa (NZ) Inc by Linda Stopforth, SNIPS and is provided on a weekly basis. It is current as at Tuesday 18 April 2017
If you have any feedback about content - what parts are most useful or what you would like added - please email admin@nurse.org.nz
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